Friday, October 9, 2015

Blackhat

***DISCLAIMER***
The following review is entirely my opinion. If you comment (which I
encourage you to do) be respectful. If you don't agree with my opinion
(or other commenters), that's fine. To each their own. These reviews
are not meant to be statements of facts or endorsements, I am just
sharing my opinions and my perspective when watching the film and is
not meant to reflect how these films should be viewed. Finally, the
reviews are given on a scale of 0-5. 0, of course, being
unwatchable. 1, being terrible. 2, being not great. 3, being okay.
4, being great and 5, being epic! And if you enjoy these reviews
feel free to share them and follow the blog or follow me on
Twitter (@RevRonster) for links to my reviews and the occasional
live-Tweet session of the movie I'm watching! So...do police hats shoot unarmed blackhats?

Blackhat – 2 out of 5

Hollywood has an interesting relationship with hacking.At first, it was kinda adorable how
screenwriters tried to forcefully bring in this budding culture into the world
of movies and now they are so out of their depth that they think computers can
literally do anything with the most experienced hacker—who, also according to
screenwriters, is usually the most eccentric person with a love of caffeinated
beverages and possibly a love of electronic dance music.In reality, hacking usually amounts to your
Facebook page or email getting invaded and all your friends receive messages
about getting a bigger penis or something—of course, there are times when
Anonymous gets really ambitious and outs a bunch of people who use a website
dedicated to cheating on your spouse.I
could spout for hours about the ethical repercussions of these actions, the
reality of a group of people declaring they are the ones to police the morality
of complete strangers or how it’s unfair they aren’t targeting student loan or
credit card companies and wiping out all our debt but, instead, I’ll talk about
a hacking movie called Blackhat!

THRILLING!!!!

After a hacker causes a meltdown at a nuclear power plant in
Chai Wan, Hong Kong, a military officer in the cyber crimes division; Captain
Chen Dawai (Leehom Wang), is charged with finding out who caused the
destruction.He learns the hack occurred
thanks to a Remote Access Tool (aka RAT).The big problem is that the RAT was created by him and his college
roommate Nick Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth)—who is currently serving time for an
unrelated hacking crime.Lein seeks the
help of the FBI and is allowed to get the service of Hathaway.Together, and also with the help of his network
engineer sister (Wei Tang), they seek to find the person behind the terrorist
attack.

Explosions aren't a bad thing for nuclear power plants, are they?

Hemsworth, he wears his sunglasses at night.Not Shown: Night.

Cyber crime thrillers can be a coin toss on whether they’re
going to be good or not.If you have a
script that clearly doesn’t understand what computers can do, it can come off
silly.If you have a script that
understands TOO well what computers can do, it can be boring—who wants to see a
thriller that’s all about some dudes sitting in a dark room, staring at a
glowing computer screen and typing?However, when you have the Adonis that is the man who played Thor and
the director that gave us the epic crime thriller Heat, how can you lose?Well, pretty easily, I guess.

The look of "really?" after watching this film.

From an acting standpoint, Blackhat is a decent film.The cast isnever the problem because Wang (yes, laugh it up, 14 year old boys who
stumbled upon this blog), Hemsworth, Tang and even the addition of Viola Davis
as an FBI agent are all doing their jobs as well enough as they can.The problem that came from this movie comes
in the form of action that never feels satisfying and feels more gratuitous due
to the slow nature of the narrative, visuals that are extremely unappealing and
almost convey a sense that director Michael Mann just didn’t care, and an
overwhelmingly boring story.

She better hurry this dinner meeting up, I think she has another one whereshe talks about getting some sort of suicide squad together.

Blackhat could have been great but the entire movie feels
like it is just going through the motions at its best or is completely
disinterested in the final product at its worse.Slowly the film trudges through its plot and
story with no real sense of urgency that is shown in the trailer and then, as
if to try and keep you interested and not turning off your DVD, it throws in
some spectacularly uninteresting action sequences.These scenes are so mundane and mediocre that
they figuratively come off like Michael Mann just walking in front of the
camera and shrugging his shoulders.

She blew up her car just to get in the arms of Hemsworth...which isn't that crazybecause I'm pretty sure I'd do that, too.

There really is nothing special going on with Blackhat but,
overall, it isn’t too terrible.Sure,
it’s boring and it is nothing compared to the other work that Mann has done (I
can’t emphasis enough how uninspired the visuals were) but the characters were
kinda interesting (although none were developed very much) and the performances
aren’t terrible (they’re not incredible either, though).For a movie about hacking and hackers, the
film feels a little more grounded than some other features Hollywood has spat out
and there’s no cliché scene where Hemsworth furiously types at a keyboard and
says things like, “I’m in” and “I’m going to reroute the encryptions” (so, if
you’re playing Hacker Movie Bingo, you didn’t get those squares) and this
presentation is a little refreshing.Ultimately, however, this approach shows why we really need those
off-the-wall hacker elements to movies because the end product to this film is
just boredom.

It's a crime that this man's facial hair was not the entire focus of the film.

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About Me

I'm a geek, an atheist (who is also an ordained reverend), a peanut butter and jelly enthusiast, a man who shares the same name with a popular character from "Parks & Rec" and feels he can't live up to the awesomeness of the fictional character, was proudly banned from Reddit, an occasional Shakespearean performer, and a stand up comic.
Have any questions, recommendations or wanna share any theories on various movies? Email me at RevRonMovies@gmail.com and I'll talk about them on my new Q&A segment!